Chapter One

IRISH STEP DANCING BODIES

Although the meanings and experiences of Irish step dancing are shaped by their

travels through the public imagination, that is, through media, and are altered by

garments that are worn by participants, Irish step dancing is, first and foremost, an

embodied practice. It is the moving bodies of dancers that create many of the meanings

generated in Irish step dance. Dancing teachers and dancers are interested in shaping

those bodies to fit the imperatives of Irish step dancing values as they are formulated and

condensed into a framework for competitive Irish step dancing. To address these

meanings, I examine recent literature on the body—especially those models created by

dance scholars—and then apply some of the schemas developed by the discipline to Irish

step dancing bodies.

DANCE THEORY AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF THE BODY

In the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, “the

body” increasingly became popular as a subject for academic examination. Scholars in

fields as diverse as gender studies, anthropology, sociology, literature, and other areas

began to examine the means by which the body is shaped by discourse, and, alternately

shapes discourse. Along with interest in the body as a general category of research, dance

studies began to widen its scope (increasingly including examinations of dancing and

gender, class, race, and colonialism), became increasingly popular, and seemed more and

more relevant to non-dance scholars. In her article, “The Poetics and Politics of Dance,”

Susan Reed reinforces this idea, noting, “Since the mid-1980s, there has been an

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explosion of dance studies as scholars from a variety of disciplines have turned their

attention to dance” (527). The increasing relevance of the body to academia in general

seems highly related to this surge in dance scholarship.

Many contemporary scholars of dance and the body suggest that the body is not

simply a “natural” entity, but is circumscribed and defined by and in relation to

discursive forces. In addition, in this relationship, the body is not a mute set of organs,

which is inserted into a wide relation of “higher” discursive or ideological interactions,

but rather makes its own meanings through its form, through its movements, through its

interactions with other bodies, and through acts of perception, among many other means.

Put again, the body is not just an inert object that is imprinted by larger conceptions of

“society,” “gender,” or “race,” but rather, bodily experiences and movements construct

meanings which contribute to, and indeed partially construct, our ideas of these

definitions. A prominent figure using this approach is Susan Foster. In her introduction to

the 1995 edited volume, Choreographing History, Foster asserts the idea that bodily

discourse stands as a separate and valid source of meaning, which cannot be spoken for

by “verbal discourse,” but which enters into dialogue with the written word and other

more legitimized discursive practices (9). She further states that there are “codes and

conventions of bodily signification that allow bodies to represent and communicate with

other bodies,” directly instead of indirectly, part of discourse, and not just mediated by

other levels of it (10-11). The body, according to Foster, actively articulates its own

meanings, which are in conversation with other types of textual, ideological, and social

meanings.

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 Foster asserts that, while traditional aspects of analysis stress modifiers of the

body, types of bodies, or “non-normative” bodies such as bodies of people of color,

women, queer people, and other groups, a study of the body would focus not only on

these “descriptive pronouncements,” but also on the ways that bodies and bodily

experiences intersect with them, are shaped by these discourses, and in turn interact with

and shape them. Following Foster, it seems clear to me that bodies are mediated, enacted

and encoded differently in different cultures. I believe that our physical experiences may

be cultured, just as our cultural experiences may be grounded in physicality. Intersections

bodily experiences, cultures, and discourses are both “nonnatural” and “impermanent,” in

that they are always changing and are shaped in relation to locally and temporally

specific perceptions, impressions, and conversations (3). Bodies may be written about,

and may make their own writings of a sort. However, bodies often do not conform to the

ways in which they are written or fixed in scholarship, or are expected to perform.

Written documents, as well as ideologies, provide many means of idealizing bodies, but

bodies react to, shape, intervene, and alter these discourses through their actions, their

presence, and their materiality.

Airing some of the same concepts, Helen Thomas assesses some approaches to

the body in scholarship in her book, The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory. These range

from “social constructivist” approaches to the body, which “privilege the symbolic,

textual or discursive aspects of the body,” to approaches which include “foundational,

physical and experiential elements, which are also available in the history of the body”

(13). As Janet Wolff comments in her essay, “Reinstating Corporeality: Feminism and

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Body Politics,” “the ‘body’ is a product of social histories, social relations, and

discourses, all of which define it, identify its key features… prescribe and proscribe its

behavior… There can… be no ‘direct’ experience of the body, and we cannot talk about,

or even conceive of, the body as some pre-given entity” (93). I would agree with Wolff

that our experiences of the body are constrained by material factors and interactions with

other bodies, and that they are also defined by interactions with abstract ideas and

ideologies. 1

Foucault, Butler and Bourdieu

Scholars who have had important impacts upon studies of the body in general

include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu. Their works are instrumental

to my own study and ideas of the body. All three of these authors are likely to fall more

on the “constructivist” side of the spectrum, which seems a useful place for me to focus

because while this thesis will explore the experience of competitive Irish step dancing to

a certain extent, it will also focus on the ways that costume, authority, and media are used

to define new constructions of an Irish step dancing body, and the ways in which those

constructions relate to, and help to define, political and economic circumstances.

Whereas Foucault focuses on the relation between discipline and the body, Butler

expands upon his and others’ ideas to suggest ways in which gender norms are enforced

through individually enacted performativity, in addition to broader societal disciplinary

forces. Bourdieu’s idea of the habitus suggests ways in which the body and the individual

has his or her responses and understandings of the world shaped by a classed surround, or

an environment shaped by another social category.

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 Foucault laid out, among many other topics, a formative set of theories

concerning the relationship between the body and practices of discipline, in his

groundbreaking work, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Although Foucault

initially describes the means by which the bodies of the condemned were first physically

punished, and later controlled, he describes ways in which the same types of disciplinary

practices were further spread through society. Foucault details the means by which

disciplinary procedures were and are applied to persons in hospitals, schools, and other

public institutions. Foucault wrote:

“The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it,
breaks it down and rearranges it. A ‘political anatomy’, which was also a
‘mechanics of power’, was being born; it defined how one may have a
hold over other’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but
so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and
the efficiency that one determines” (138).

While Foucault focused on nineteenth-century Europe, I find it appropriate to extend

some of his ideas about discipline to twentieth and twenty-first century Irish step dancing.

Foucault discussed the ways in which disciplinary processes shape the body,

understanding, personality, outlook, behavior and expectations of those subjected to it,

writing, “Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that

regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise” (170). Thus

discipline in many ways constructs personal identity, in that the individual finds his or

her experience (or personal sense of self, values) structured by the impact of these

processes, in relation to general societal imperatives. Foucault also noted the disciplinary

properties of social hierarchies and the normalizing judgments of others. These social

hierarchies are maintained by surveillance, schooling, and supervision, for example.

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Normalizing judgment relates to social punishment for behavior that does not fall within

the standard of the “norm.” According to Foucault, “At the heart of all disciplinary

systems functions a small penal mechanism” (177). These disciplinary systems alter our

experiences of our body, as well as the ways in which we control our own bodies.

Foucualt’s work has been criticized for being relatively unreflective of gender as a

whole. In addition, several scholars have suggested that Foucault does not attribute

sufficient agency to the subjects of his study; that is, the bodies in question are subjects of

disciplinary practices and not agentive in creating their own world. However, I find

Foucault’s work to be crucial in terms of relating a view of the body to sociopolitical

structures, and in terms of invigorating academic studies of the body, with regards to not

only discipline but also sexuality and other topics. I believe that his work has very useful

applications to the study of Irish step dancing.

In practices such as Irish step dancing, the dancer’s body is observed and

corrected by the teacher (or the adjudicator), and commented favorably upon by other

dancers. Movements that are not perceived as “correct” by the teacher or the adjudicator

may be sanctioned by the application of negative social pressure. Individual dancers learn

how to police their own bodies, and to present themselves in manners that do not elicit

punishment or negative consequences, such as lower scores in competitions. The

discipline involved produces, to a certain extent, a body that is “docile” or which does not

question the conventions of the dance practice.

Judith Butler expands upon the writings of Foucault and many other subsequent

scholars. In Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Butler questions the

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limits of both agency and structural power with regards to the shaping and performance

of gender norms. With regards to power and authority, Butler states “…there is no power,

construed as a subject, that acts, but only, to repeat an earlier phrase, a reiterating acting

that is power in its persistence and instability. This is less an ‘act,’ singular and

deliberate, than a nexus of power and discourse that repeats or mimes the discursive

gestures of power” (225). Thus, the body is impacted and shaped by force of its own acts

of repetition, or “citation” of different norms of power, as opposed to a preexisting

power. The two—the act that enforces the ideology or changes it, and the ideology itself

(our perception of unifying disciplinary norms)—are shaped by and through each other’s

histories and recitations.

In noting the instability of power, she specifically strives not to insist upon an

idea that construction of gender “forecloses agency, preempts the agency of the subject,

[or] finds itself presupposing the subject that it calls into question.” Butler further states:

…to claim that the subject is itself produced in and as a gendered matrix
of relations is not to do away with the subject, but only to ask after the
conditions of its emergence and operation. The ‘activity’ of this gendering
cannot, strictly speaking, be a human act or expression, a willful
appropriation, and it is certainly not a question of taking on a mask; it is
the matrix through which all willing first becomes possible, its enabling
cultural condition” (7).

Butler specifically states that this “nexus,” or, alternately, “matrix” of power or of gender

is not homogeneous or singular in its effect, and is not entirely deterministic. In addition,

construction of gender, according to Butler,

…is neither a single act nor a causal process initiated by the subject and
culminating in a set of fixed effects. Construction not only takes place in
time, but is itself a temporal process which operates through the reiteration

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 of norms; sex is both produced and destabilized in the course of this
reiteration (10).

It seems as though Butler’s model of performativity might apply not only to constructions

of gender, but also to constructions of nationality, ethnicity or race, and sexuality—

although each category is likely to be performed in significantly different ways.

Butler notes Lacan’s notions of “citationality,” and strives to rework the concept

of “performativity” as “citationality” (14). Butler writes “performativity is thus not a

singular ‘act,’ for it is always a reiteration of a norm or set of norms, and to the extent

that it acquires an act-like status in the present, it conceals or dissimulates the

conventions of which it is a repetition” (12). Butler argues “…performativity is construed

as that power of discourse to produce effects through reiteration” (20) She states that the

“laws” of gender, or in fact, any social norm “can only remain a law to the extent that it

compels the differentiated citations and approximations.” With regard to gender these

“citations and approximations” are “called ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’” (15). In Butler’s

theories, abstract concepts are reproduced by our actions and thoughts, which largely

consist of reiterations of the modalities and ways of being of previous people.

Dance scholar Susan Foster queried Judith Butler’s notion of performativity in her

1998 article, “Choreographies of Gender.” Foster argues that the notion of gender as

performance relies too heavily on linguistic, spoken, or written modes of performing, and

that Butler does not sufficiently address corporeal means of making movement. Foster

suggests that, if scholars are going to use terms such as “performance” in their theories,

they might benefit from serious examination of the mechanisms of performance practices,

such as dance, to clarify their approaches. Whereas Butler focuses more on compulsory

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repetitions and iterations of action and thought in her model of performativity, Foster

suggests that bodies and people exercise significantly more agency in their shapings of

gender and culture. Foster instead offers the model of “choreography,” which, although

similar to performance, is focused more on bodily inventiveness. She writes:

Choreography challenges the dichotomization of verbal and nonverbal

cultural practices by asserting the thought-filledness of movement and the
theoretical potential of bodily action (28).

Foster thus challenges Butler’s ideas to include an analysis of the body, of the meanings

that bodies can make, and do not simply reiterate or repeat, and an increasing focus on the

malleability of the process of the choreography of gender.

Bodies intersect not only with discourses of gender, but with discourses of class

as well. Pierre Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice discusses the concept of the

“habitus,” which is “a socially constituted system of cognitive and motivating structures”

(76). The subject learns to “[embody] the structures of the world” and is able to

“appropriate the world” once he or she has learned the means by which to do so. (89). In

the words of Bourdieu, “the habitus is the universalizing mediation which causes an

individual agent's practices, without either explicit reason or signifying intent, to be none

the less ‘sensible’ and ‘reasonable’” (79). Bourdieu speaks particularly of a “class

habitus,” which in some sense can be construed as a personal (but shared, as in similar to

that of other people in the same condition) environment which is interpreted (and,

perhaps, manipulated) by the person in question, according to its own particular

collective rules, which are partially determined by the shared experience of belonging to

a particular economic class (81).

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 The person occupying the habitus seems to have less agentive ability than the

person enacting Butler’s performativity. According to Bourdieu, “each agent, wittingly or

unwittingly, willy nilly, is a producer and reproducer of objective meaning… The

schemes of thought and expression he has acquired are the basis for the intentionless

invention of regulated improvisation” (79). However, even if the subject has less ability

to control his or her own experience under Bourdieu’s models, people are also not

regulated by some abstract or preexisting idea, but instead help to produce meaning

through their actions, which are controlled to a certain extent mainly by factors of

“environment.” According to Bourdieu:

the objective homogenizing of group or class habitus which results from

the homogeneity of the conditions of existence is what enables practices to
be objectively harmonized without any intentional calculation or
conscious reference to a norm and mutually adjusted in the absence of any
direct interaction or, a fortiori, explicit co-ordination (80).

In Bourdieu’s scheme, then, we are both the subjects and (to a lesser extent) the agents of

history. Bourdieu notes, “It is just as true and just as untrue to say that collective actions

produce the event or that they are its product.” (82). Although their choices of focus may

differ, the mechanisms for the creation of meaning and social structures that Bourdieu

and Butler describe bear similarities. The difference seems to lie, on the one hand, in the

distinction between a more collective understanding that is enacted by the body in the

“habitus,” and on the other opposed to an individual reinforcement of norms of power

through bodily and social “performativity” as repetition.

It seems that any particular person’s disposition to certain ideals or ways of

understanding and interacting with the world is related to the particular consciousness

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that is produced in relation to social structures and categories. The habitus of a person, or

his or her mode of relating to the world, is shaped in relation to how a person is defined

by social groups. The consensus that Bourdieu writes of may be the (not necessarily

mandatory, but perhaps statistically likely) way in which people from certain social

groups may interact with and understand the terms of society. The competitive Irish step

dancing experience is also a means of learning how to operate within a specific portion of

society, shaping one’s responses to other elements of life.

Dance and performance scholars have built upon the notions offered by these and

other theorists, and reinterpreted Foucault, Butler and Bourdieu in and regarding

performance contexts. In addition, the growth in dance and performance scholarship in

general has allowed dance writers and choreographers to offer new theories, which in

turn interact with Foucault, Butler and Bourdieu. However, even with the burgeoning of

dance studies, “dance continues to evade analysis on anything like the scale in which

other expressive forms have been considered,” as Angela McRobbie notes (207). 2

Nevertheless, important conceptual work, which I shall detail below, has expanded

theories relating to dance and the body, and to link analysis of dance and other

performance to other fields of study, and especially those which invoke the wide array of

critical theories such as theories related to race, class, gender, post-coloniality, and

globalization.

There seems to be a general consensus in current dance studies that movements,

formations, actions, and functions of the body are both constitutive of broader social

categories and ideologies and also defined by them. According to Jane Desmond, who

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writes in her edited volume, Meaning In Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, “Social

relations are both enacted and produced through the body, and not merely inscribed upon

it” (33). However, it is also possible to reverse this relation, and describe the impact of

theories of the body on not just ideas of its own construction, but also on the world

supposedly “external” to it.

We can, like Angela McRobbie, call for a “sociology of dance” (she notes that

“some of the most richly coded class practices in contemporary society can be observed

in leisure and dance”), or a gender studies of dance, or a post-colonial study of dance, but

the important point to remember is that these studies do not simply comment upon dance

itself, as an isolated practice, but upon the broader social spectrum of existence and

theory (211). When we try to analyze dance, for example, as a social or cultural practice,

what we are really in the end looking for is a greater understanding of life in general, and

not dance as a specific unit. In the words of Desmond:

because so many of our most explosive and most tenacious categories of

identity are mapped onto bodily difference, including race and gender, but
expanding through a continual slippage of categories to include ethnicity
and nationality and even sexuality as well, we should not ignore the ways
in which dance signals and enacts social identities in all their continually
changing configurations (49).

The body makes meaning about itself, and is shaped by other meanings and practices, but

the body and dance—and here, competitive Irish step dance—both make new meanings

and reiterate “old” meanings about the broader world, in concert with everything around

them.

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 DISCUSSIONS OF AN IRISH STEP DANCING BODY

This section uses and emphasizes the approaches of two very different scholars,

Cynthia Novack and Brenda Dixon Gottschild, to discuss Irish step dancing as an

embodied practice. Although the subject matter each scholar has pursued is distinct from

the other, as are the theoretical lenses employed, both writers use a surprisingly similar

methodology to lay out some of the basic characteristics of their particular practices they

consider.

In Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture, Cynthia

Novack (later, Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull) describes several major movement

characteristics of contact improvisation in comparison to a wide variety of movement

forms, including, but not limited to, ballet, Cunnigham-style modern dance, wresting, and

disco. Novack describes these forms in terms of their relation to space, audience,

partnering, the body, and, particularly, gender. Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s Digging the

Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts, frames a more

specific, but no less insightful, scope when she compares and contrasts the aesthetics,

movement characteristics, and social constructions of Africanist dance in relation to

Europeanist dance. Where Cynthia Novack’s descriptions focus more on the specific

mechanics of contact improvisation movements, Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s descriptors

tend to focus on broader aesthetic appraisals. Where Novack focuses more on the

experience of the performer, Dixon Gottschild describes elements of dance that might be

more perceptible to viewers as well as performers.

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 Novack’s descriptors are grounded for the most part in the experience of contact

improvisation, but she also appraises contact improvisation in its social and

“performance” contexts. 3 According significant attention to gender and social hierarchy,

she argues that participants in contact improvisation equalize or destabilize gender roles,

which she considers to be situated within the broader spectrum of patriarchy.

Dixon Gottschild, in contrast, limits the number of descriptors to five “premises

of an Africanist aesthetic,” and provides more intensive descriptive analysis of the

specific principles she lays out, which include: “embracing the conflict;”

“polycentrism/polyrhythm;” “high-affect juxtaposition;” “ephebism;” and “the aesthetic

of the cool” (1-19). Whereas Novack places emphasis on the gendered aspects of

performance, Dixon Gottschild pays much closer attention to constructions of race and

the constraints of colonialism. However, it is not Dixon Gottschild’s purpose to simply

describe the ways in which Africanisms were marginalized, but rather, the ways in which

Africansims form the basis for major aspects of performance in the contemporary world

as well as in the recent past. Dixon Gottschild reclaims and asserts elements of an

Africanist dance analysis, and demands recognition for an Africanist presence in

American dance forms, such as tap, ballet and hip hop.

I use the Novack and Dixon Gottschild strategy of isolating and explaining some

defining characteristics of the form to address competitive Irish step dancing. Because the

practice of competitive Irish step dancing is constantly in flux, and because the

perception of what is most important in “defining” competitive Irish step dancing may

vary considerably from person to person, the following offerings are not meant to be, and

27
should not be perceived as, a final or complete set of descriptors of Irish step dancing.

The characteristics I have chosen as most relevant for this discussion include: “time,”

“space and bodily interaction,” “precision and replicability,” “many competing objectives

within a single body,” and “creativity and allowance for change,” as well as “gendered

norms of representation.”

These categories and divisions seem to me to be most relevant not only because

they call forth unique aspects of Irish dancing experiences, but also because they accord

with some of the theoretical frameworks discussed above, such as those proposed by

Butler, Bourdieu, and Foucault. The ways in which conceptions of time shape Irish

dancing performance recalls Foucault, as does the emphasis on precision and reliability—

all of these can be viewed as ways in which Irish dancing bodies are disciplined. The

ways in which dancers interact with space and other dancers moderately recalls the ways

in which Bourdieu’s habitus is constituted. The emphasis on creativity and change, even

after all of the disciplinary practices are taken into account, takes into account some of

Foster’s challenge to Butler’s performance of identity. Finally, the section on the ways in

which dancers are segregated into binary genders calls for an interpretation in light of the

arguments of Butler and Foster.

Time

The competitive Irish step dancing body is one that works within, is bounded by,

and is enabled by the structures of a metronomic time and pre-ordained rhythms. Indeed,

musicians certified for Irish step dancing competition are trained in the standard of the

metronome, and dancers follow accordingly. In competition, a champion dancer is

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specifically required to provide both a tune and a specific speed at which his or her set

dance is to be performed. The selection of a tune certifies both the number of bars and

the time signature—and only a limited number of time signatures are approved by the

competitive structure as “traditional” or appropriate. This time signature for the set is

either 4/4 or 6/8, with one exception (a set that is rarely if ever performed is called “Is

the Big Man Within?;” it features an intro of a 9/8 rhythm, but which is otherwise

standard, set, and codified).

A dancer will present this selection (a humorous example being the set dance

“Rub the Bag” at speed 69) to an official at the side of the stage. The dance and time

will be announced, the dancer will wait, without dancing, the mandated eight bars, and

then the dancer will begin the dance. The musician will already have been trained in the

tune, and likely will know the tune by heart, having played it on a multitude of

occasions. The musician will pay strong attention to the metronome in front of him, and

occasionally beat his foot in time with the tune as a physical reminder of the time

constraint. False starts or late starts are prohibited. If the musician plays the wrong tune

or plays a tune at an incorrect speed, either the adjudicator (with the feared ding of his or

her bell) or the dancer will stop the dance and correct the error.

The dancer must, in all cases, adhere to the rhythm. The choreography may allow

for playing around the rhythm, doubling the rhythm, or adding punctuated moments of

silence, but in general, the beats of the dancer’s feet follow and punctuate the rhythm.

Deviations from this meticulous metronomic standard are obvious to the adjudicator,

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who has endured years of training and experience first as a certified teacher, then as she

is re-assessed at the adjudicator’s examination, and still later after years of judging.

Furthermore, it is often easy for experienced listeners to discern deviations from

the norm, especially as the fiberglass toes and heels of the dancing shoes crack out

various tones, which, when off the mark, can seem jarring. The dancer is a drummer, in

a certain sense, but this is not all that she is. Not only must the beats she makes with her

feet accord with the rhythm, but indeed all other movements of the body must follow it

as well. The length of a leap is determined by the duration of the beat. So is the speed of

an entrechat, or the height of a kick. Everything in the dance is determined by what can

fit into a specified length of music.

This is not to say that no dancer ever goes out of time. However, if the dancer

does not assume the correct time within a very short period of lapse, she will be

penalized. It is often said that a dancer that is out of time, off the beat, will be given a

low placement in competition, no matter how perfect the other aspects of her dance.

Furthermore, the errant dancer, once she realizes she is out of time, may feel personally

pained and shamed, traumatized by having to listen to her own off-the-mark beats. A

calm and well put-together dancer will not show the damage to her psyche. In addition,

the lapse in timing reverberates through the audience—a single tap of a fiberglass toe on

a wooden stage makes a surprisingly loud noise—and others in the audience, also

trained to follow the metronomic model, may blanche or indicate dissatisfaction. In

some ways, this adherence to time makes it difficult to watch all but the most competent

dancers, because the human body, especially at beginner or intermediate levels, does not

30
easily fit itself into the constraints of the metronome. The experience of watching the

perfectly timed dancer may be rapturous to an Irish step dancing audience, but the

experience of watching an inferior one, one that deviates from the time, can be simply

painful.

The strict adherence to time encouraged by Irish dancing culture, as well as the

penalties for deviation from metronomic time in competition, recall the use of time in

Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. In the chapter, “Docile Bodies,” Foucault describes

ways in which bodies are disciplined to become more obedient and skillful, so that they

will eventually become “improved,” more easily manipulated, or more useful to

authority. Time is one of the elements of the disciplinary process. According to

Foucault, a disciplined body may be encouraged to move through timetables, and to

order his or her behavior according to a schedule. The end goals of the management of

time include efficiency in movement and the control of idle bodies. Movements in this

schema are separated into smaller increments and ordered.

All of these descriptions seem to recall Irish dancing technique. Irish dancing

bodies are expected to conform quite rigidly to the metronome of time—but in their

rigidity they become tempered and more flexible, more able to move into specific

patterns which are deemed desirable. The acquisition of discipline, too, is, in my

experience, often an explicit goal that Irish dancing teaches promote to their students

and to parents, as one of the virtues of Irish step dancing. One of the major elements of

this discipline is the achievement of bodily control according to metronomic timetables.

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Space and Bodily Interaction

The competitive dancer must be thoroughly conscious of her use of space. The

relation to space is different when engaging in different styles of competitive dances—

the two principle ones being solo dances and “ceílí” dances, which are group or “figure”

dances. The solo dancer has greater freedom, according to the choreography of the

teacher, to utilize the stage to his advantage. The dancer may wish to show breadth of

usage of the stage, and move a great deal, or he may wish to monopolize the front of the

stage, in order to show off steps to greatest advantage. The ceílí or figure dancer must

make economic use of the stage, staying in close relation to the other dancers and the

pattern she is creating. Within the ceílí dance, there are no abrupt or on the spot changes

in the relation to space. The dancer must remain in concert with her peers, lest she

destroy the order of the dance.

All dances in the competitive framework are set in relation to the front of the

stage, and in relation to the adjudicator. The solo dancer utilizes the space directly in

order to capture the adjudicator’s attention. Beginner dancers may use the space in fewer

ways, perhaps performing their first step, or “lead around” in a circle, and then

performing their second step in a set pattern of stage right to left lines, or constrained

zigzags. In contrast, the advanced dancer may complicate his usage of space a bit more.

He generally begins from his place upstage, and makes diagonal strides downstage, to

the fore of the adjudicator’s vision, but then may retreat to other spaces on the stage, as

is impelled by his step.

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 In general, although the dancer moves with consciousness of the other

competitor on stage, his actions are independent of the other dancer, and the two dancers

move with no obvious relation to each other. An aggressive dancer (not necessarily

successful in competition) may wish to monopolize the downstage area, for example,

and edge in front of another competitor, so that the other competitor is out of view. That

same aggressive dancer may also wish to collide with the other competitor, or in some

other way intimidate the other competitor. Incidents of kicking and bumping are not

unknown, although they are not encouraged. It is up to the adjudicator to assign fault

regarding the collision, the severity, and whether or not it is relevant to the judging of

the dancers. Thus, there is little bodily or person-to-person physical contact between

dancers.

The spatial awareness of the ceílí dancer is markedly different from that of the

solo dancer. Ceílí dancers must maintain precise, textbook patterns of lines and stars.

The dancer must know when to be at rest and when to be in motion, as certain lines

move and others do not. The dancer must maintain a precise awareness of the person at

her side, the couple across from her, the center of the stage, and the couple to her side.

She must maintain a specified distance from or proximity to all of these people. She

must always be in line with all of these people, whether moving or stationary, except in

the rare moments in which the figure calls for asymmetry.

Not only must her body be in its place, but her facing must be appropriate. She

generally faces the interior of the figure or pattern, and does not overtly address the

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judge through her movement. Rather, in addressing the dance, the whole of the group

addresses the adjudicator.

The ceílí dancer’s hands must be perfectly in alignment when they are in use, as

during catches. Although this alignment is variable according to the style of the teacher,

it is supposed to be precise and homogenous within a single group. It is important that

the group style be exactly identical within its unit (although between schools there may

be variations). The hands and the arms must not rise or sink, except where designed to

do so, they must not overlap more than they are designed to do, and they must be raised

or lowered exactly when they need to be.

As in solo dancing, so in ceílí dancing and figure dancing: direct physical bodily

interaction is kept to a minimum. Physical contact is made only through the hands,

although an awareness of the other bodies in the space is constant. However, because of

their close connection to their partners, dancers are already in imaginary contact,

through their vision, through their relation in space, and through their knowledge of the

other dancers.

The use of space in Irish dancing, and the relations between dancers, echoes both

Foucault and Bourdieu. For example, the ordering of bodies in relation to one another

recalls Foucault’s concept of “partitioning,” in which bodies are assigned their own

place in space. The purpose of partitioning is to break up mobs of people, or to

“analyze,” or make order out of, “confused, massive or transient pluralities” or groups of

individuals. The end of such an ordering is to:

Establish presences and absences, to know where and how to locate

individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be

34
 able at each moment to supervise the conduct of each individual, to
assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merit. It was a procedure,
therefore, aimed at knowing, mastering and using (143).

Similarly, in Irish dancing, bodies are arranged explicitly so that they may be judged (by

an adjudicator, no less). Dancers are taught to maintain their distance from others, to

stay within their own space, to not overlap their bodies with the bodies of others. The

dance is judged not for the individual merits of each participant, but for the

cohesiveness, and orderliness of the whole. However, the dancer learns that there are

penalties for stepping outside of the shape and for not staying in alignment—not only

will they incur penalties from adjudicators, but they will also spark the displeasure of

their peers and their teacher.

However, dancers also create a social space, a portion of their habitus, if you

will. Along the lines of Bourdieu, they learn what constitutes appropriate behavior for

someone of their rank and status, and they learn to collaborate to make an effective

presentation of the imperatives of Irish dancing—and maintain a classed social space

and a nationalism-tinged social space. Part of learning how to comport themselves as

individuals is learning how to maintain the composure of the whole.

Precision and Replicability

There is, in general, a “correct” way, and many “incorrect” ways, of performing

competitive Irish step dance. The “correct” ways of dancing are largely determined by

undocumented and unstated norms and standards that are solidified and specified by the

adjudication at competitions, and by the personal standards and tastes of teachers. There

are several basic guidelines for the “ideal” or “perfect” Irish step dancing body. For

35
example, toes must be pointed, feet must have articulated and exaggerated arches, the

dancer must have “lift” (that is, height in leaps off of the ground), the dancer must

“travel” by moving across the stage, the dancer must cross her feet (and knees), the

dancer must have turnout, the dancer should perform leaps at an angle of more than 90˚,

the dancer must maintain the correct rhythm, the dancer must flow when necessary (slip

jig) and perform staccato when necessary (hardshoe), the dancer must kick fully up

behind, and the dancer must “cut” up to the knee or beyond. Although these ideals are

well understood by, at the very least, advanced dancers, teachers, and adjudicators, they

are not offered to the dancer in a text or in another codified form. They are transmitted

orally and through the long observation of other “correct” and “incorrect” dancers (as

these are made known through competition results), and the commendations or

discouragement received from authority figures in general.

The dancer must precisely fit all of these standards, and many others, even while

she stays precisely within the beat. The penalty for lack of adherence to these norms is

failure to gain or to achieve respect and high placement in competition. Because the

dancers may often gauge their self worth and their standard of performance by recourse

to the opinions of judges and teachers, they must follow these unstated rules to the letter:

they must be precise. Styles and movements may vary between teachers, and do vary

over time, but many of the basic elements and ideals remain consistent and largely

uncontested. Some of these are, of course, more stable than others—it has likely never

been very acceptable to diverge from the time signature of the music, but aerobic jumps

have grown more and more desirable, and dancing has become consistently faster.

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However, regardless of the changes in fashionable movements over the past decade at

least, the basic directions applied to Irish step dancing—timing, leg crossing, turnout,

dancing on three-quarter pointe—remain virtually the same and vary little from teacher

to teacher, or from school to school.

Dances must also be capable of replication, on small and large scales. Dancers,

according to their competitive level, will perform either two or three “steps,” or eight bar

sets of patterned movement. They will, however, perform these steps on both the right

and the left “feet,” and thus will perform not 16 or 24 bars of movement in one dance,

but 32 or 48. Dancers must be able to replicate exactly their movements on the right and

left sides, performing the same movements as if the second 8-bar step were a mirror

image of the first. It is not possible for a dancer to place highly simply by being able to

do a high kick or a high leap on one side or the other—each side must be identical for

the height to matter.

In addition, codified dances such as “traditional sets” and ceílí dances must be

performed in exactly the same way across generations, albeit with small stylistic or

“regional” differences that do not interfere with the general trajectory of movements, the

timing of those movements, the rhythm, or the ordained order of steps. These dances, as

well as beginner dances, which are more homogenous than their advanced counterparts,

form the base for all more advanced movements and have not been greatly altered by the

passage of time. Dancers thus learn roughly the same “St. Patrick’s Day” or “Walls of

Limerick” as did their predecessors thirty or sixty years before, and as will, theoretically,

future dancers.

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 Irish step dancing functions within a set of rules that effectively prohibit

documentation, because in many cases, it is illegal to videotape competitions. These

rules tend to discourage the copying of technical and creative innovations, or, rather, the

replication of exact 8-bar steps that are developed by teachers. Dancers and teachers can,

and do, copy movements from certain steps they have personally witnessed, and

disseminate movements innovations exhibited at major and local championships to other

schools and other students. However, full steps, that is, complete sequences of

movement, are rarely if ever directly copied. Dancers and teachers who wish to copy and

include new developments offered by pupils from other schools must either learn

through observation or through organizing a guest residency in which outside teachers

come into a particular school and choreograph or teach new steps. Although no steps or

movements are legally copyrighted by the schools, there is a strong recognition, in the

competition circuit, of ownership of steps by the teachers who create them.

Irish step dancing schools generally operate as single, separate units, under one

teacher, or a small number of teachers. Teachers from different schools may come

together to share new ideas, but it does not seem to be common practice for teachers to

caucus for the purpose of explaining new techniques or movements. Although dancing

camps such as Gaelic Roots (Boston College, 1993-present/2007) and Camp Rince Ceol

(New York and California, 2000-present/2007) do offer opportunities for students from

a variety of schools to perfect their technique in a context of sharing, these camps are the

exception, rather than the rule. In addition, at least at Camp Rince Ceol, as I witnessed

38
as a camp counselor in New York in 2001, students are only offered assistance with

technique, and are not taught new steps per se.

Thus, while the repetition of certain core steps, dances, and movements is

encouraged, there is also a resistance to documentation, to the sharing of technique, and

to open dissemination of new movement material. Instead, material is acquired either

through the creativity of one’s own teacher, through the outsourcing of other teachers’

skills, or through observation of competition.

In learning the “correct” way of performing Irish step dancing, dancers move

along a trajectory of steps, and move from one level to the next. 4 In this process, their

achievements are ordered according to an expectation of their rank in Irish dancing. For

example, when a dancer has achieved first place in one level in a particular dancing, say

in Beginner II slip jig, she will then begin to learn the specified steps that the pupils of

her school perform when they reach Novice slip jig competition. She will then continue

to perform those same steps , repeatedly, until either she achieves Prizewinner level in

the slip jig, or until her teacher reformulates the steps for the entire school. There is thus

a hierarchy of steps one must follow as the dancer moves from one stage of development

to the next. This hierarchy of steps is comprised of ordered increments, from which the

dancer is not supposed to diverge. The pedagogy of Irish dancing thus resembles the

“analytical pedagogy” which Foucault suggests helps to create docile bodies.

Many Competing Objectives Within a Single Body

Irish step dancers’ bodies are expected to perform a much-remarked-upon duality

between stillness and acrobatic, high-paced movement. Whereas the upper body must

39
remain immobile and upright, the lower body must move according to the step at hand.

The lower body generates “movement” and “dance,” whereas the upper body generates

poise and exhibits decorum. Although dancers may focus on the upper body to correct

its faults, such as by constraining an aberrantly twitching arm, to constrain bucking of

the torso, or to plaster on a smile, in general the upper body is secondary to the lower.

These constraints have been solidified by the competitive regime over time, and, where

previous dancer may have simply not accorded attention to the upper body, present-day

dancers put much energy into stabilizing it and maintaining its stillness.

This is not to say that the lower body is not also constrained in its own ways. The

dancer rarely moves her legs out to the side (as opposed to in front or in back), rarely

uncrosses her legs unless performing special movements, and rarely ceases pointing her

toes, except during periods of stamping or specialized jumps such as “butterflies.”

However, energy and exertion is demonstrated almost exclusively through the lower

body, which must be agile, flexible, and expressive.

Creativity and Allowance for Change

The competitive structure encourages innovation and change. A dancing teacher

must be highly aware of new developments and filter them in with their own steps and

understanding of technique. In addition, when dancing teachers have reached the highest

levels, they may often feel encouraged to design new movements, not only to satisfy

their creative urges, but to maintain their prominence on the world scene. There are both

inducements and penalties for the introduction of new material. Because new material is

tried within the context of competition, judges who do not approve of the new material

40
have the discretion to award fewer points, and lower placement to dancers. However,

material that distinguishes the solo dancer from a long line of competitors, and

impresses the adjudicator with its cleverness or technical brilliance, may raise placement

in competition.

Certain innovations are more easily accepted than others, and certain forums are

more receptive to the development of new material than others. Innovations in costume

and steps that are showcased by successful, prominent schools with numerous, high-

placing champions appear more likely to be emulated and accepted than those offered by

schools that do not have such a record.

Although Irish dancers learn how to discipline—and make docile—their

physicality and their bodies, they do not simply move through a set of mandated levels

of dancing, only to achieve the same things that their predecessors have. Indeed, they

also learn how to create new ways of performing their identities through dancing.

Dancers who achieve higher rankings are allowed to engage in the practice of

choreography—both in the explicit sense of being able to choreograph dances, and in the

implicit sense of being able to change the expectations of what is desirable. Dancers at

higher levels perform new and changing movements that become accepted into the

repertoire. Thus dancers who have been able to achieve a certain level of prestige are

able to re-choreograph, to an extent, the expectations of Irish dancing, which are always

somewhat in flux. Irish dancing is not static in terms of its expectations of what is

desirable. The malleability of Irish dancing thus recalls some of Susan Foster’s critique

of Judith Butler. That is, although dancers are expected to reiterate past norms of

41
dancing, they are also granted the agency (after they have earned the privilege) to

change the movements that are acceptable in Irish dancing—even if the structure of

dancing hierarchies and organizations themselves remain relatively static.

Gendered Norms of Presentation

Irish step dancing practice is in some ways highly gendered and in other ways

relatively ungendered. Irish step dancing movements, for example, are sometimes

gendered. Although all dancers generally start with the same gender-free beginner steps,

dances begin to be gendered as competitors move up the ranks. For example, male

dancers are not generally encouraged to perform “feminine” slip jig steps, and are not

allowed to perform these steps at all at higher levels of competition. Although most solo

dancers compete in mixed-gender competitions, at the highest levels of championships

boys and men are separated from girls and women, as well as being sorted into their age

categories. In addition, some movements are deemed too “feminine” for boys to perform

in competition, and some movements are deemed too “masculine” for girls to perform.

For example, men almost never feature “toe stands” or frilly jumps, and may even be

criticized for performing such basic movements as developpé kicks. In addition, male

dancers perform movements such as clicks and other hard-shoe-derived movements in

their soft shoe dances, as well as more athletic jumps. These unstated or informal rules

are generally stricter for men than for women, who have a greater freedom in terms of the

movements they are allowed to perform. In Irish step dancing culture, masculinity may

be perceived as more threatened than femininity, especially as dancing in general is often

42
perceived as gendered “female” in areas such as the U.S. and Ireland, where competitive

Irish step dancing is often performed.

In dance dramas and performances, hardshoe dances are often gendered male or

unisex, whereas softshoe dances are almost always gendered female. Regardless of the

fact that male dancers do have to perform the reel in one of the three championship

rounds, and in all four of the softshoe dances-- reel, light jig, slip jig, single jig-- in earlier

levels (when these dances are offered for competition), they generally do not perform in

soft shoe in shows. It is notable that at no point in the entirety of Riverdance: The Show,

do male dancers perform in softshoes. In addition, the masculinity of “male” characters is

often highlighted and punctuated in dance dramas by the use of hardshoe.

Masculinity is also protected in ceílí and figure dancing competition, where

female dancers can easily perform male roles without question, but where male dancers

are not allowed to perform female positions. Indeed, there are even separate competitions

for ceílí and figure dances that feature “mixed” genders, and those for girls and women

alone. While it is usual to see an all-female team, all-male teams are not acceptable. I

have never observed a mixed ceílí or figure team that was composed of more than half

men or boys, whereas girls and women commonly step in for male dancers in the absence

of enough male participants. A mixed team commonly features two male dancers out of

eight, with female dancers standing in relatively ungendered “male” roles.

In Irish dancing, dancers learn to negotiate gender in very particular ways.

Generally, to use Butler’s language, they are expected to “perform” roles which accord

with a male-female binary, and deviations from these norms are not widely accepted.

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However, the sense of what these expectations are is specific to Irish dancing, and

changes moderately over time. For example, while men had once been the primary

performers of slip jigs, the dance is now relatively confined to women. Women’s

relations to hard shoe steps has been acceptable in different ways in different regions and

time periods. As new movements are developed, it is not necessarily obvious who will be

encouraged to perform them, and who will not, and the meanings of individual

movements change over time. While dancers certainly must interact with a defined

structure of gender relations (as put into practice according to dancing rule books and as

reinforced by teachers and adjudicators), dancers do have some agency in terms of

reshaping gender relations or dissolving gender binaries. However, the extent to which

they can do this is in large part constrained by both formal rulings and informal

conventions.

In sum, competitive Irish step dancing bodies can be looked at through a variety

of theoretical lenses. The bodily practices of Irish step dancing act together and alone to

make meanings about themselves, about nationality, about identity, and about their own

gender expressions. In this chapter, some aspects of Irish step dancing bodies have been

analyzed, such as their adherence to the boundaries of linear, segmented time frames,

their interactions or lack thereof with other bodies, the precision involved in

participating in the dance form, the multitude of sometimes conflicting tasks Irish step

dancing bodies are expected to perform, and the possibilities for change in the

movement schema, which coexist with the limitations imposed by the imperative of

dancers and teachers to preserve a sense of “tradition.” Irish step dancing bodies have

44
also been assessed in terms of the ways in which they are gendered. Other aspects of

Irish step dancing bodies, and the meanings that Irish step dancing movements make,

remain to be discussed further by future scholars.

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 ENDNOTES

1 Because bodies can also be approached from a “constructivist” angle and not simply as
“natural” entities—indeed the entire concept of natural is constructed—studies of the
body in relation to society, ideology, or any other category of meaning do not only focus
on the direct, lived, physical experience of the body, but rather often include studies of
mediated bodies (as “captured” in photographs and film, for example), studies of the
economics of bodies (anything from the study of cosmetics industries to dance ticket
sales, and beyond), or the contributions of bodies to broader political movements
(perhaps through studies of the psychic imprints of footsteps in protests or the
inequalities between access to medical care), etc. Authors who explore these different
approaches to the body include Derrick Burrill (mediated bodies), Mark Franko and
Tracy Davis (economic bodies), and J’aime Morrison and Marta Savigliano (political
bodies). These are of course only a small sample of the ways in which studies of the body
may be written. It is my belief that the “constructivist” models and the “naturalistic”
models do not have to be mutually exclusive; that is, “the body” is not separate from
“culture,” just as “culture” is inseparable from “the body.” See Mark Franko, The Work
of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930s, (Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press, 2002), Marta Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion:
From Exoticism to Decolonization, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), Tracy Davis,
Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (New York:
Routledge, 1991), J’aime Morrison, “Mapping Irish Movement: Dance-Politics-History,”
Ph.D. Diss., New York University (2003), and Derek Burrill, “Out of the Box:
Performance, Drama, and Interactive Software,” Modern Drama, 48:3 (Fall 2005): 492-
512.

2 Helen Thomas, in her book, The Body, Dance, and Cultural Theory, reinforces this
observation, stating, “Few social or cultural theorists of the body have been drawn to
address dance systematically as a discursive or situated aesthetic practice, to generate
insights into, for example, the politics of sexual and/or racial and/or class differences as
they are traced through representations of the body and inscribed in bodily practices,”
they are traced through representations of the body and inscribed in bodily practices.”
Helen Thomas, The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory (Basingstoke, New York:
Palgrave, 2003), 1.

3 Cythia Novack lists the defining characteristics of contact improvisation dance as the
following: “governing movement through the changing points of contact between
bodies;” “sensing through the skin;” “rolling through the body;” “focus on segmenting
the body and moving in several directions simultaneously;” “experiencing movement
from the inside;” “using 360-degree space;” “going with the momentum,” “emphasizing
weight and flow;” “tacit inclusion of the audience;” “conscious informality of
presentation,” “modeled on a practice or jam;” “the dancer is just a person;” “letting the
dance happen;” and “everyone should be equally important.” Cynthia J. Novack, Sharing

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the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1990), 114-149.

4 Each dance is composed of either two or three eight-bar “steps,” which are performed
on both the right and left feet. A dance composed of three steps is performed in the span
of approximately a minute and a half, more or less depending on the metrical structure of
the particular type of music, and the speed at which the music is performed.

47